Mild Amusement

I've said it before, but people in my family tend to have a sense of humor .  Jokes & gags are constantly flying at family functions, or even when all three of the Chang siblings are reunited (e.g., the " I Know You, Chang " bit).  It keeps things light, and keeps everyone on their toes.  I've been the butt of more jokes than I care to admit. One very interesting side effect of this, however, is that this often leads to people getting funny nicknames.  We crack jokes, something has that ring to it, and next thing you know, that becomes someone's nickname.  Over time, I've managed to come up with a few favorites.  In no particular order: "Travesura" (it means "Mischief" in English) This one was given to a particularly mischievous kid from the day care, because he would constantly get into some sort of shenanigans or another.  My brother & I were talking about how mischievous he was, and one of us said, "this kid's like ...

A couple of weeks ago, I was heading out to meet up with some friends.  I wasn't exactly looking forward to the drive; it was a rainy Friday night, and I was leaving right around rush hour.  Still, it made the most sense for me to leave at that time, so I steeled myself for the journey. However, as is wont to happen in my life, plans very quickly changed.  The mother of a couple of infants from the day care was home with a sick child, and she was going to be late to come pick up the other two.  Now, she knew full well that she had to bundle up a sick child, get both herself & the sick child to our house, pick up two more children, and then march right back to her house with three little kids.  Still, she didn't even question this plan, because that's more or less what parents do. My mom, on the other hand, realized that I was headed in the same direction as the children's house.  So, rather than making this lady jump through all sorts of hoops, my m...

I'm not much of a soda drinker these days.  I used to drink far more of the stuff when I was in school, but soda just doesn't hold that much of an appeal for me anymore.  Sure, I'll feel like having some every now and then, but my drink of choice on a day-to-day basis is definitely not soda. And over time, I've realized that I prefer some of the sweeter sodas.  In particular, I've found that I like orange Fanta (side note: I was really tempted to start this post with, "I don't always drink soda, but when I do, I prefer Fanta," a la the Dos Equis guy ).  I know it's not common for that to be someone's favorite soda, but then again, I've never claimed to be all that normal. So, given my uncommon preference, I was pretty happy to find out that the vending machine at work has my soda of choice.  Unfortunately, I know all too well that "uncommon" doesn't necessarily sell well.  I walk by that vending machine every single day, a...

I'm around little kids a lot, so I get to talk and play with them a lot.  And little kids act on pure emotions, so they often say and do things without regard to what other people think.  Most of the time, it's just a conversation.  Every now and again, though, I am privy to absolute hilarity.  Don't believe me?  Check out the first and second installments in this series. My usual caveat applies here; by no means am I making fun of the toddlers (that'd be more than a tad mean).  I do think that some of the things they say are amusing, though.  And in the spirit of the blog, I do some extra typing. So, without further ado: Dad: "Hey, don't touch tia's flowers.  She works hard on getting them to grow" Kid: "I'm not touching them.  I'm picking them up" The verbal sleight of hand caused more than one (muffled) chuckle in the room. (This little girl is old enough to go to school, so she usually doesn't join us.  Today, th...

I recently moved into a new cubicle at work, so I've been trying to minimize the amount of noise I make.  As part of that effort, I've been using my headphones more often when I listen to my daily slew of podcasts.  I use a desktop at work, so that means that my headphones are connected to a tower that sits on the ground.  Fortunately, the headphones have a long enough cord that they'll reach me, so that's not a problem. What is a problem, however, is that there is no place to rest the ear buds when I step away from my desk or otherwise stop listening.  If I place them too close to the edge of the desk, they'll fall right off.  To further complicate things, the long cord also means that there's a non-trivial pull on the ear buds towards the computer on the ground.  Even resting the headphones a few inches away from the edge of the desk can be problematic.  And I don't want these things falling/lying on the ground, so I have to be very careful about m...

I have to admit, traffic patterns have always confused me a little bit.  There are times when there is congestion on a highway long past the actual obstruction (e.g., an accident) being removed.  It's almost like there's residual traffic, as a warning to everyone that "a bad thing happened here."  There are also times when there are a surprising number of cars on the road; for example, did you know that the east-bound lanes on both the Bay Bridge and the Caldecott tunnel consistently see a lot of traffic around noon on Saturdays?  Where are all of these people going?  You figure they can't ALL be going to lunch, and if they were going on a weekend trip, they would've left earlier in the morning. So, with that as a caveat, perhaps you could excuse my confusion when there was a surprising amount of traffic going West on the Bay Bridge (i.e., into the city) a little after 7PM on a weeknight.  Generally, if I've left the office that late, I don't see...